Reports Volume 20 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ...assembly should provide by general laws for the organization of cities and incorporated villages. By these plain provisions the framers of the present constitution believed they had put an end to the system of special laws for the incorporation and control of cities and villages, and placed the same on a rational basis, where a general law would be framed for the organization of cities and villages, and that this law, being required to be uniform throughout the state, would undergo no change, except when the representatives from all parts of the state were consulted and were willing that the proposed change should affect their own constituents and other parts of the state alike. The supreme court, early after the adoption of the new constitution, decided that the prohibition of special laws conferring corporate power applied to municipal corporations as well as to private corporations, and it required the invention of the " classification of cities," and the passage of laws in terms applicable to a class, as a means of evading that requirement of the constitution requiring uniform operation throughout the state. Under this scheme of classification, carried as it was to an absurdity of refinement, laws were easily passed apparently general in form, and applicable to a whole class, while the class was only a single city or village. Unfortunately the supreme court gave its sanction to this scheme of classification, not appreciating, perhaps, at the time the evils that were to grow out of the legislative and judicial precedents. The scheme thus launched and held to be constitutional was speedily resorted to to effect a mass of special legislation pertaining to municipal affairs, which has been both productive of uncounted evil and disgraceful to the s...